No Going Back: A Hard Look At Bipolar Disorder

Juliann Garey is a journalist and film critic, and the author of Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See.

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Originally published on January 11, 2013 4:11 pm

For years, I've taken issue with depictions of mentally ill characters in books and movies. Irrational behavior is easily explained away: They're crazy! No need to elaborate further.

So when I picked up Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See, I was apprehensive that the main character, an untreated bipolar Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and child for an international adventure, might be a kooky manic cliche.

But the author, Juliann Garey, is not an outsider looking in — she's a bipolar journalist and screenwriter, and the character she creates in this novel is interesting and complex.

Each chapter begins inside Greyson Todd's thoughts as he goes under anesthesia for his ECT treatments in a New York psychiatric hospital. He is strapped down and told to think back on his life to help him keep calm. We learn his life story in pieces — nonchronological flashbacks of his childhood with a bipolar father, his disintegrating marriage and career, and his travels, where he tries with varying results to escape himself.

The author's strongest skill is to make us really feel that we are inside Grey's head. You'd think he'd be a difficult character to love — he abandons his family, he's unpredictable. But we can understand his rationales; we know that he's not a villain. His self-absorption is part of his episodes and part of how he's trying to survive.

We also like Grey because he is funny. His disarmingly dark, dry sense of humor made me laugh out loud several times. Once, he doesn't remember regaining consciousness in the recovery suite after his ECT treatment. He says, "That's what they call it — a suite. Someone in the hospital's PR department must have spent quite a while paging through a thesaurus in search of that gem ... I've spent a lot of time in hotel suites over the last decade, but not one of them had a bed made up with rubber sheets or came with an in-room defibrillator or a guy in the next bed who thought he was Jesus."

The author's description of how mania and depression feel from the inside resonates deeply with my own experience of bipolar disorder. In mania, heightened sensations feel like superpowers, and life is typhoons and hurricanes. Depressed, life is like drowning. Grey describes how even breathing is exhausting: "I am no more up to the constant inhaling and exhaling than I am to running a marathon."

But my own experience doesn't include psychosis, the delusions and hallucinations that are sometimes a part of mania, and in this book I think I learned the most from Grey's descents into psychosis. We are deftly led through his erratic trains of thought, and suddenly we are with him in the irrational, sometimes violent place, and oddly, we understand how we got there.

In one scene of a psychotic break, he develops a buzzing in his ears that soon builds to panic. He is dangerous, especially to himself, and he needs treatment, but we have sympathy for him.

Reading this book is like Greyson's ride on the back of a stranger's motorcycle in Uganda:

"Kwendo climbs back on the bike and motions for me to get on ... He drives fast. No one here wears helmets, and on several sharp turns I have to squeeze my thighs together to keep from becoming roadkill. The experience is everything I'd hoped for ... I am lost now and there is no going back."

Ellen Forney is the author of the graphic memoir Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. A new novel leads readers on a journey through the life of a man struggling with bipolar disorder. The book is from writer Juliann Garey. Our reviewer, Ellen Forney, knows all too well the peaks and valleys of bipolar disorder, and she says the book rings true.

ELLEN FORNEY: I tend to get annoyed by books and movies with mentally ill characters. If the story doesn't make sense, well, they're crazy. Of course, it doesn't make sense. So I was skeptical when I picked up the novel "Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See" by Juliann Garey. It's about a Hollywood studio executive with untreated bipolar disorder. He leaves his wife and child, hits the road and goes on an international adventure.

I braced for another kooky, manic cliche. But this book's author isn't some outsider looking in. She's also bipolar. The character she creates is complex. And she really gets us inside his head. Each chapter starts with Greyson Todd's thoughts in the hospital, right before he goes under anesthesia. He's getting ECT, electroconvulsive therapy.

You'd think he would be a tough character to love. He abandons his family. He's unpredictable. But we get him. He's not a villain. He's trying to survive. The author's descriptions of mania and depression felt true to me, to my own bipolar disorder. In mania, the sensations are heightened. They feel like superpowers. Life is all typhoons and hurricanes. In depression, life is like drowning. Greyson describes how even breathing is exhausting. He says: I am no more up to the constant inhaling and exhaling than I am to running a marathon.

At one point, Greyson rides on the back of a stranger's motorcycle. As I read that part, I thought to myself, you know, that's what reading this whole book is like. Here's what he thinks to himself: No one here wears helmets. And on several sharp turns, I have to squeeze my thighs together to keep from becoming road kill. The experience is everything I had hoped for, he says. I am lost now and there is no going back.

BLOCK: The book is "Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See" by Juliann Garey. Our reviewer, Ellen Forney, is the author of the graphic memoir "Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.